Replacement wheels

[jjb62556]

I have a Kato Canadian Pacific passenger set from years ago that I would like to replace just the wheels in the trucks.
 A friend of mine is having problems with his running on C55 track, so I'm looking to change them out....Any ideas....Thanks, Jim

[craigolio1]

Kato has the trucks listed on the website:

http://search.cartserver.com/search/search.cgi?cartid=s-1078&keywords=NBUDDCORR&maxhits=100&go=List+Parts&bool=AND&bool=AND

They likely have the low profile wheels. Other wise you can get yours turned down.

Craig.

[Mark5]

https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/kato-n-932040-passenger-car-wheelset-4/

Mark

[Maletrain]

There are lots of replacement wheels on the market.  But, I am not sure what types of trucks Kato  was using "many years ago", so I will give you some general info to try to help you get what you really want.

What you need to know to select from the available wheels is (1) the wheel diameter, which is probably 36 (prototype) inches" for heavyweight passenger cars, and (2) the axle length of the model wheels, which varies by manufacturer and sometimes it varies by date made by the same manufacturer.  The best way to make sure you know what you need is to use a caliper to measure what you have, then order the same diameter and axle length.

Another issue is whether your passenger cars have lights, or if you may someday want to install lights.  If that is true, then you will need to have wheels that are made of metal, not plastic, and they may need to be insulated differently than usual, depending on whether your lighting system uses "all wheel pickup" or not.  All wheel pickup, has metal axles that are insulated in the middle of the axle, usually by having two half-axles held in a sleeve, and the wheels on both ends of the axles pick up current, transmit it to their ends of the axle and the truck side frames have conductive inserts that pick up the current from the axle halves and pass it into the car body with some sort of tabs (Kato and Bachmann) or wires.  You can tell if you have that kind of truck by looking a the side frames for the metallic inserts in the sideframes.  The other way that cars are lit is to use standard metal wheel sets that have a solid metal axle, and one of the two wheels is insulated from the axle by a bushing in the wheel.  In that case, one truck picks up current from one rail and the other picks up current from the other rail.  That type has metallic wipers that take current from the center of the axles and pass it up into the car body by a metallic pivot point for the truck.  So, if you have (or want) the wiper type of lighting, then there are a lot of metal wheel sets that you could get.  But, if you don't already have a lighting system in your car and you want one in the future, you should probably consider getting whole new Kato trucks, rather than just wheels, so that they will easily mate with a Kato lighting kit, which would be the easiest thing to install in a Kato car.

Sorry if I made something that you thought was easy seem hard.  We could give more specific advice if we knew more about the particular Kato cars that you have.  Or, maybe an expert here on Kato vintage cars can tell yo what issues do and don't arise between various vintages of Kato manufacture.

[peteski]

Kato (since their beginnings) always had fairly low-flange wheels.  Not sure if replacing the old Kato with new Kato wheels will solve the problem. Actually, as far as passenger car wheels go, the ones that Katos sells now, are the same as they put in their passenger cars for decades.  Unlike the Diesel wheels which are now closer to fine scale (narrower tread and low-flange).

[altohorn25]

Kato (since their beginnings) always had fairly low-flange wheels.  Not sure if replacing the old Kato with new Kato wheels will solve the problem. Actually, as far as passenger car wheels go, the ones that Katos sells now, are the same as they put in their passenger cars for decades.  Unlike the Diesel wheels which are now closer to fine scale (narrower tread and low-flange).

That's not quite accurate - the original run of Budd cars had deeper flanges than cars manufactured after that.  Not much, but enough that they bump Atlas code 55 just a bit.

I can't remember if the original 6 and 4 car sets of smoothside cars had this problem or not....

[peteski]

That's not quite accurate - the original run of Budd cars had deeper flanges than cars manufactured after that.  Not much, but enough that they bump Atlas code 55 just a bit.

I can't remember if the original 6 and 4 car sets of smoothside cars had this problem or not....

I guess they must have changed the depth few times over time.  I'm currently reading the Kato 50th anniversary book and even their first steam loco (Japanese C50 2-6-0 loco) has rather shallow flanges.

Well, I dug up my old early Kato 4-car smooth side passenger set.  Part# 106-020. Its wheels have tread diameter of 0.218", flange diameter 0.273" and flange depth 0.028".  I don't have any Atlas c55 flex, but when I ran the truck over Atlas c55 turnout, it did not hit the spikes.

This 4-car set is from the 1st run Kate ever did in 1992 (I remember reserving it at BLW), and they also have the first iteration of the Kato knuckle couplers (which was later replaced with he one used today).  See http://www.katousa.com/N/oop/Smooth.html

The new Kato passenger wheels (which I call semi-scale as they have narrow tread, and low flange) have tread diameter 0.0218", flange diameter 0.259" and flange depth 0.021".  These would definitely not have any problems on c55 track,  but they are not sold separately.

I also have the Kato passenger wheel set (part # 932040, bought from MBK on February 2019). It has the tread diameter 0.218", flange diameter 0.273" and flange depth 0.028". That is the same as the wheels from my old 4-car set I mentioned early.  So using them as replacement wheels will nto make any difference in flange depth. I'm actually disappointed that Kato is not selling their "semi-scale" passenger wheelsets separately.

[Maletrain]

The OP says that a friend of his is having trouble running his Kato passenger cars on code 55 track.

So, given that Peteski is not having trouble with what he thinks are the same wheels on an Atlas code 55 turnout, it seems like there might be a few more issues to consider.  Such as what code 55 track is the OP's friend having trouble with, and does the OP really have the same flanges as his friend?

I suggest that before the OP dives into the rabbit hole, that he gets a piece of the code 55 track he intends to use and actually tries his own wheels on it to see if there is actually any problem with his assortment of components.  The "spike" heads on various types of code 55 track are different, and even different vintages of code 55 track from the same manufacturer (e.g., Micro Engineering) can have different spike heads, some of which may hit the OP's wheel flanges and some of which probably will not.

[jjb62556]

Atlas Code 55 track

[Angus Shops]

I have a Via Rail car from the smooth side set (UP prototypes) that I recall to be the first that Kato released and I have Atlas code 55 in my staging yard. It generally seems to roll without interference from the spike heads - mostly. There are some very short sections where I can feel just a touch of what may contact with the spikes. I wonder if there is some slight variation in the Atlas spikes heads... The flanges on these wheelsets are pretty big and I had a close look at the flange/spike clearances with a piece of loose track and I can see that they're very close. Is it possible that Atlas's track may have different spike head heights over the years?
Geoff

[peteski]

As measured the height of Kato wheel flange is 0.028".  The old wheels, and the ones currently available as spare parts from Kato.  If their flange hits the spikes, then it seems the only alternative for replacement wheels would brand other than Kato. But then of course the electric pickup won't work without modifications.  I suppose another solution would be to sand the spikes down a bit, and keep the existing wheels. But this could be a bit tedious.

[nkalanaga]

I haven't tried replacing Kato wheels, but have turned the flanges.  It's easy on the passenger cars, since there are no gears involved. 

Take the wheelsets out of the truck;
remove the wheels from the plastic axle tubes;
chuck the stub axles in a motor tool (or lathe, if you have one!);
carefully file the flanges down, checking with an NMRA gauge make sure you don't get them too small;
put the finished wheelsets back together, and back in the trucks;
check the gauge, to make sure they're right after all of the handling.

I've had sets that were perfect after reassembly, but got squeezed a little tighter being put in the trucks, so checking at the end is a good idea.

It takes a little time, but costs nothing, and the lighting still works.

All of mine run fine on ME code 55, but I wanted to be able to run a few on my MILW branch, for special events, and it has ME code 40 track.